Image: Universal Pictures (1993)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>Oskar Schindler was the greatest con artist in history. Most conmen fail. The successful ones manage to swindle a few people and make a few dollars. The greatest cons swindle more people and make more dollars. Oskar Schindler didn\u2019t con 10, 50, or even 100 people; he conned the entire Nazi Party. He made a fortune, and then spent it all\u2013becoming destitute by the\u00a0war\u2019s end\u2013\u00a0to keep his con working. And at the end, there were 1,100 Polish Jews who escaped Auschwitz because of him.<\/p>\n
All of the great films tell great stories, but a few of them have stories of their own.\u00a0One day in 1980 the\u00a0novelist Thomas Keneally entered, by pure chance, a Beverly Hills store owned by an old Jew named Leopold. Learning that his customer was a writer, Leopold told Keneally that his real name was Poldek Pffeferberg and that he survived World War II in Poland because a German named Schindler had hired Jews to work in his factories. After much pleading, Keneally agreed to write Pffeferberg\u2019s story, and published Schindler\u2019s Ark<\/em> (it was retitled Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> in the States) in 1982.<\/p>\nSteven Spielberg read Keneally\u2019s book and knew it had to be filmed, but didn\u2019t want to do it himself. Only after Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski both told Spielberg they couldn\u2019t make it did he decide it had to be him (Polanski would make The Pianist<\/em> ten years after Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> released). It proved to be one of the\u00a0landmark decisions of his legendary career. No one could have made Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> the way Spielberg made it.<\/p>\nThere are so many great scenes in Schindler\u2019s List<\/em>, so many moments of purity and transcendence and horror that it is tempting to merely dub it \u201cgreat art\u201d and esteem it the way we might a Renaissance painting or a Handel composition. But it is Spielberg\u2019s great gift of storytelling that prevents us from doing so. We must confront the history, the events, the people, and the places. Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> is art, yes, but it is also fact, and must be received as such. It\u2019s not easy.<\/p>\nPerhaps that explains then why Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> seems to be fading from cultural consciousness. It appears only very rarely on television, owing to Spielberg\u2019s inflexible rule that it broadcast unedited. It comes up frequently on lists like the IMDB Top 10 films of all time, but I\u2019m consistently surprised at how many people admit to not having seen it. It\u2019s true that films like The Godfather<\/em> and Gone With the Wind<\/em> are such fixtures of culture that many feel like they have seen them even if they haven\u2019t. Is that the case with Schindler\u2019s List<\/em>? I doubt it. More likely it is being slowly forgotten. It deserves better.<\/p>\nThese days Liam Neeson has successfully styled himself as an action hero. His fans owe it to themselves to watch him carefully in this film. He plays Oskar Schindler like a man totally in control. The film\u2019s second scene shows Schindler throwing money at waiters at an upscale SS dinner party\u00a0like a soldier hands out cigarettes. We get the iconic moving\u00a0close-up of Schindler as he identifies who among the Nazi guests should be schmoozed. Later on, in one Neeson\u2019s best scenes, he rescues his accountant Izthak Stern (Ben Kingsley) from deportation by intimidating the officers in charge. We watch and might be tempted to dismiss\u00a0Schindler\u2019s persona\u00a0as implausible, until we remember that Nazism won Germany in large part because of one man\u2019s charisma. Those who believe they\u2019re in charge often are.<\/p>\n
Later, Schindler bribes the commander of Auschwitz after his workers are mistakenly taken there. Spielberg and his editor Michael Kahn, who won the Oscar, place this conversation immediately after the well-known \u201cshower scene.\u201d Our emotions reeling, we watch as Schindler seems to grow and the Nazi seems to shrink. \u201cI\u2019m not judging you, but in the coming months we all are going to need portable wealth,\u201d Schindler says, unveiling a bag of diamonds. The commander threatens to have him arrested. \u201cI\u2019m protected by powerful friends,\u201d Schindler replies, showing not the slightest bit of concern. A few minutes later, Spielberg gives us one of Schindler\u2019s List\u2019s<\/em> most powerful shots: A shorn and terrified group of women leave the camp and enter safety with Schindler himself in their midst, towering over them like a protective shelter.<\/p>\nSchindler\u2019s enemy is not Nazism but one of its manifestations, the work camp commandant Amon Goethe. It is said that some Jewish survivors on Spielberg\u2019s set cried out in terror when they saw Ralph Fiennes in full costume. Just as Neeson gives Schindler a cocksure CEO persona, so Fiennes plays Goethe as a man with insatiable bloodlust and possible insanity. He falls in his love with his Jewish housemaid but beats her savagely to atone for it. From his villa overlooking the work camp he uses Jews for target practice. Spielberg makes no attempt to shield his audience from the psychotic randomness of the Holocaust\u2019s evil.<\/p>\n
In his essay on the film Roger Ebert asked whether it\u00a0would have been better if Goethe had not been portrayed as a psychopath but as a man living out his ideals consistently and obediently. That\u2019s a good question. My instinct says that it was precisely Goethe\u2019s instability that gave Schindler an opportunity to master him. A sharper and more principled man might have called Schindler\u2019s bluff or at least resisted all those bribes. In a way, Goethe\u2019s\u00a0madness draws comparisons to the Reich\u2019s downfall; there is only so much pure evil you can imbibe without stumbling.<\/p>\n
Spielberg contrasts these two men explicitly. Three important shots send the message: A scene early that cuts back and forth between the two men shaving; a confrontation over the ghetto massacre that puts both men on either side of the frame\u00a0 and shadow between; and Schindler\u2019s offer to purchase his workers from Goethe in exchange for their lives. Screenwriter Steve Zallian\u00a0is flawless in that last scene: \u00a0\u201cYou want these people?\u201d Goethe asks. \u201cThey\u2019re MY people, I want my people. \u201cWho are you, Moses?\u201d It\u2019s not the first or the last time Goethe speaks beyond his comprehension.<\/p>\n
How did Goethe never catch on? As if to insult his intelligence, Schindler orders a hose to spray water into train cars filled with Jews right in front of him. Goethe cackles, \u201cYou\u2019re giving\u00a0them hope! That\u2019s cruel, you shouldn\u2019t do that!\u201d I love the way Neeson smiles in response. He knows Goethe cannot stop him because he cannot fathom him.<\/p>\n
Oh, how much more can be said! A little girl with a red coat, a typewriter creating salvation with every keystroke, and a candle burning quietly and fiercely against the night\u2013so many timeless images that Spielberg created. There\u2019s a tender hand in every relentless shot of terror. If it is true at all that art can reach into our souls, then Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> does exactly that.<\/p>\nThe Holocaust is unfilmable. No movie can capture what genocide of six million people actually means. Some have objected to Spielberg\u2019s film because it has a happy ending. I\u2019m not sure that survival is always the same as happy, and even if it is, so what? The memory of the six million lives in the testimony of the 1,100. It is their story that Spielberg tells, and tells with grace and truth. That is the test of a great filmmaker and a great film. Wherever Oskar Schindler\u2019s name is remembered, Steven Spielberg\u2019s movie will be remembered too.<\/p>\n
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oskar Schindler was the greatest con artist in history. Most conmen fail. The successful ones manage to swindle a few people and make a few dollars. The greatest cons swindle more people and make more dollars. Oskar Schindler didn\u2019t con 10, 50, or even 100 people; he conned the entire Nazi Party. He made a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,307],"tags":[336,349,121,347,348],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies-2","category-my-essential-movies","tag-academy-awards","tag-holocaust","tag-liam-neeson","tag-schindlers-list","tag-steven-spielberg"],"yoast_head":"\n
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